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REPORT 



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BROTHEEHOOD 



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HELD IN NEW YORK, 24th AND 25th JUNE, 1857. 



ISSUED BY THE FRATEENITY. 



NEW YORK: 

CHARLES SCRIBNER, 377 & 379 BROADWAY. 
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M.DCCC.LVm. 



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19548 



JOHX F. TKOW, 
Steam Book and Job Printer, 
37T & 379 Broadway. 




New York, January, 1858. 

To THE Fraternity of Alpha Delta Phi : 

In accordance with a refolution of the laft Convention, held in 
New York, the Manhattan Chapter, through its Committee, has the 
honor of prefenting herewith a Report of the Proceedings of the 
Fraternity's Twenty-fifth Anniverfary. 

The Chapter regrets greatly that circumftances entirely beyond 
their control have fo long delayed the pubhcation of their Report, 
but trufts that it will, notwithilanding, prove acceptable to the 
Brotherhood. 

Your brothers in Alpha Delta Phi, 

Franklin S. Rising, 
J. Lyman Van Buren, 
J. Weir Mason, 

Committee. 



The Fraternity, in Convention, held with the Yale Chapter in 
July, 1856, resolved to commemorate the Anniversary of the 
Twenty-fifth year of its existence by a public celebration in 
New York. The carrying into effect of this resolution was in- 
trusted to a Committee chosen by the several Chapters from 
among their graduates, resident in and about that city. This 
Committee, styled " The General Committee," was composed of 
the following brothers : — 

Alexander Spaulding, of the Hamilton Chapter. 



Oliver W. Root, . . 


u 


Miami 


William W. Goodrich, 


(( 


Amherst 


Edward T. Caswell,* 


(( 


Brunonian 


Joseph H. Choate, . . 


u 


Harvard 


William C. Gilman, Jr., 


({ 


Yale 


John N. Whiting, . . 


<.i 


Geneva 


Henry B. Smith, . . . 


n 


Bowdoin . 


Chauncey M. Cady, 


(( 


Peninsular 


Daniel Hall, . . . 


ii 


Dartmouth 


Edmund L. Joy, . . . 


u 


Empire 


J. R. Griffin, . . . 


u 


Alabama 


Theodore A. Gardner, 


il 


Williams 


Franklin S. Rising, 


t; 


Manhattan 


George H. Tracy, 


u 


Middletown 



Brother Choate was chosen Chairman, and Brother Rising 
Secretary. 

* Bro. Caswell having been called from the city, his place was filled by 
Brother George B. Paine. 



b ALPHA DELTA PHI. 

In discharging the duty assigned them, the G-eneral Com- 
mittee acted in accordance with the resolution to which refer- 
ence has before been made, and provided for an Oration and 
Poem, and for a Dinner. 

They requested the Manhattan Chapter to take charge of, 
and arrange for, the Business Convention to be held in connec- 
tion with the Anniversary, and that Chapter designated as its 
Committee for that purpose, Bros. J. Lyman Van Buren, Russell 
Sturgis, Jr., and G-eo. Elias Hawes. 

The Greneral Committee also extended invitations to Bro. 
Donald G-. Mitchell of the Yale Chapter, to deliver an Oration, 
and to Bro. William C. Williamson, of the Harvard Chapter, to 
read a Poem before the Brotherhood at its approaching Anni- 
versary. These invitations having been accepted, and other ar- 
rangements perfected, a formal call was issued to the Praternity. 

The call met with a hearty response. On the afternoon of 
June 24th, fraternal greetings were exchanged by the many 
brothers assembled in the Alpha Delta Phi Hall. A meeting 
was organized by appointing Bro. Anthony Halsey, of Columbia 
Chapter, Chairman, and, after the transaction of some business 
preliminary to the Convention, adjourned to attend the Literary 
Exercises of the evening. 



THE LifiKAil¥ EXEiCiSES 



The literary exercises connected with the Anniversary were 
held in the Church of the Divine Unity (Dr. Chapin's), No. 548 
Broadway, on the evening of Wednesday, 24th inst., before a 
large and appreciative audience. The exercises were opened 
with prayer, by Bro, Rev. 0. B. Frothingham, of the Harvard 
Chapter. Rev. R. S. Storrs, Jr., D. D., President of the Fra- 
ternity, then delivered the following 

Brothers, of the Alpha Delta Phi : 

I greet you, as assembled to celebrate this evening 
the Twenty-fifth Anniversary of our beloved and honored 
Fraternity. From all parts of our country, the North, 
the South, the East, the West ; from all walks in life, 
and all forms of occupation ; the lawyer, from the court 
room ; the statesman, from the halls of legislative coun- 
sel ; the preacher, from his pulpit ; the professor, from 
his lecture-room ; the editor, from his chair ; the physi- 
cian, from his chnics ; the artist, from his palette, pen- 



O ALPHA DELTA PHI. 

cil and maul-stick ; the retired scholar, from his books 
and pictures, and his literary leisure ; the educated mer- 
chant, from his counting-room and his ledgers ; the 
skilled mechanic, to whose hands a careful scientific 
training has communicated dexterity, and has added pre- 
cision, from the midst of inventions, engines, and appara- 
tus ; the farmer, trained in the learning of the schools, 
from his fields and yards, and his practical bucoHcs ; — we 
have gathered this evening, to recognize the real though 
unseen bonds that unite us together, and to review the 
history, and forecast the future, of this our Fraternity. 
Around it gather, to many of us, the pleasantest and most 
quickening associations of College-life. We are kindred 
through it, although till now we have not seen each oth- 
er's faces, or grasped each other's hands in welcome. The 
impalpable spiritual ties that connect us, encompass and 
grapple all our hearts ; and in this goodly and wealthy fel- 
lowship, of kindred tastes, of harmonious pursuits, of 
similar recollections, and of similar aims, we for these 
hours may joyfully dwell. 

Twenty-five yeaes ! It is much in the life of any 
one of us ; of any individual. It covers the passage from 
an ardent youth to a matured, practised, and fruitful 
manhood. It holds in it the story of faculties disciplined, 
of knowledge enlarged, of aspirations that have ripened 
into settled resolutions, of thoughts that have hardened 
into plans of activity, of hopes that have been realized 
or else have been relinquished, of a great part of our 
work on earth accomplished or omitted. Comparatively, 



TWENTY-FIFTH ANNIVEItSARY. \) 

they are few among us whom the thought of it carries 
back only to the years of our College experience. Most 
of us it reminds of our earlier boyhood. They are not 
few upon our lists, or in our present great reunion^ the 
whole span of whose life is more than encompassed by 
this brief term of twenty-five years. 

But in the history of an institution like this, in which 
it is still our privilege to be members, and whose anniver- 
sary assembles us this evening, a quarter of a century 
becomes less in importance in comparison of the whole 
protracted series. If such an institution be really found- 
ed, as we think that this is, on just and permanent in- 
stincts in the soul ; if it be adapted to meet with vigor, 
and a proximate completeness, some wants which are na- 
tive and urgent to the mind in the course of its educa- 
tion ; if it be not in any way opposed to the truest inter- 
est and the most generous nurture of those combined in 
it, but be on the other hand adapted to protect, to nour- 
ish, and to further whatever is best, most beautiful, and 
most valuable, in their social development and their lite- 
rary training ; if, in a word, it be adapted to instruct, to 
discipline, to inspire them, when they need this most, 
and most cheerfully respond to it ; — then we may reason- 
ably expect for it a duration, in the aggregate of whose 
sum this twenty-five years shall have been but a small 
part, an almost insignificant fractional part. We may 
hopefully look forward to other such celebrations ; when 
we, perhaps, shall not be here, but when others in our 
places, with hearts as loyal as ours now are to our cher- 



10 ALPHA DELTA PHI. 

islied Society, shall recite its praises, and recount, with 
only a still growing pride, their indebtedness to it, and 
its steady enlargements. 

But these twenty-five years which already have 
elapsed, since the birth of this Society — what a change, 
of consistent and rapid advance, have they witnessed and 
recorded, in itself, and in its influence ! Where there 
was at the outset but a single Chapter, and that a small 
one, there are now Fifteen. Where there was then but an 
unnoticed handful of members and of candidates, our rolls 
now number more than Eighteen Hundred, of whom by far 
the larger part are still living and active. That little shoot, 
first planted with faith at Hamilton College, has so often 
sent out the scions from itself, and the germinating in- 
fluences, to be reset in other institutions, that now in 
nearly all of the larger and more influential of our Col- 
leges, are similar Associations, combined on the same 
firm platform of principles, compacted by the same care- 
ful system of rules, animated by the same ingenuous, 
faithful, and aspiring spirit, and acknowledging the same 
endeared symbols and motto, which first found there their 
organized exhibition. Well, then, may we look forward 
with hope, and an earnest confidence, to what another 
quarter of a century, on the edge of which we now are 
standing, shall bring us as a result. 

I am sure that I but speak your own sentiments 
when I say that it is not merely, or even mainly, because 
of the pleasant and fragrant recollections connected with 
this Society, that we who are here assembled to-night so 



TWENTY-FIFTH ANNIVERSARY. 11 

highly value it, and desire its further development and 
expansion. Delightful as these are^, aromatic with the 
odors of our undouhting youth, or our 'earlier manhood, 
before the blanching cares of life had faded our spirits, 
or the freshness of our finest enthusiasms had passed, w 
should hardly have assembled so readily to-night, from 
places so remote, and from callings so diverse, if these 
had been all the bonds that connected us with this Fra- 
ternity, or all the reasons for our faith in its continuance. 
It is also, and may I not add it is chiefly, because we be- 
lieve it adapted in its principles, and adapted in its par- 
ticular methods, to the furtherance of the welfare of those 
who shall be assembled within it, that we delight to re- 
view its past, and to prophesy for it a still enlarged fu- 
ture. Of the nature of these principles and peculiar 
methods, and of their special requirements and bearings, 
I cannot of course in this place speak, except in gen- 
eral and indefinite terms. You, who have been acquaint- 
ed with them, do not need to be more than reminded of 
them ; and to those who have not been thus conversant 
with them I have no authority now to exhibit them. 

But in general it may be said, as you very well know, 
that the aim of this Society is to unite in one organized, 
catholic, and far-extending Fraternity, the finest minds, 
the most cultured, able, and manly spirits, among those 
who annually graduate from our Colleges ; to pledge these 
not to any sectional, sectarian, or partisan purpose, but to 
the noblest efforts they can make, for their own good and 
for others ; and so to make them, by more intimately and 



12 ALPHA DELTA PHI. 

widely affiliating them together, more truly and largely 
helpful to the world ; the ministers to it of a finer, riper, 
and more affluent scholarship ; of a sweeter and richer 
social spirit ; of more quickening tastes, and more edu- 
cating principles. This is the aim, and this the effort, 
of our Constitution ; and of all the forms, offices, exer- 
cises, which that enjoins. And while it is possible in 
any case, undoubtedly, to fall away practically from this 
design, to lose sight of the ends which really unite us, 
and to take occasion for arrogance, for indolence, or 
even for a more profuse dissipation, from that which was 
intended to counteract all these, it cannot be denied that 
wherever the genius of our Constitution has been fol- 
lowed out and realized, in any of the chapters— as it has 
been, I am happy to know, in nearly all — there the facul- 
ties of the Colleges have found in it a helper to their 
own best efforts, and those associated beneath its provi- 
sions have been forwarded by it in all manliest effort. 
God grant that, as it has been, so it may be to the end : 
and that those who founded the Society at first, and 
those who have loved it and labored for it since, may 
find in these benign results their great reward. 

Gentlemen, and Brotheks : I may not detain you 
longer from the services which are now to follow, and for 
which we are all already impatient. The more particu- 
lar suggestions which it becomes my duty as President 
of the Society to address to you as assembled in annual 
convention, I shall communicate at the piivate sessions 
to-morrow. But here let us all thank God for the Past: 



TWENTY-FIFTH ANNIVERSARY. 13 

and lience let us go, with joyful hearts and animated 
minds, to meet the Future, whose shadows are upon 
us. Our work is a serious, and not an ornamental one. 
It pledges us to labor, and not merely to pleasure. Our 
time for ]3erforming it, at the longest, is brief. We shall 
not all of us, we may not many of us, be assembled again 
when the Fiftieth Anniversary of this Fraternity shall 
gather again its representatives to some centre. But let 
us resolve wherever we are, and in whatsoever honorable 
avocation, to make it a part of our duty to each other ; 
of our duty to the youth, who annually assemble for aca- 
demic instruction ; of our duty to the Colleges, to which 
we owe each a personal indebtedness ; of our duty to the 
land, whose destinies are bound up with the character and 
the career of its educated men — let us make it a matter 
of present, personal, ever-binding obligation, as well as 
an office of gratitude and affection, to exempHfy in our 
own life the spirit of this Society ; and in every way to 
maintain, and still advance, the influence and the honors 
of the Alpha Delta Phi. 



The Orator of the evening, Bro. Donald Gr. Mitchell, was 
then introduced by the President. 



14 ALPHA DELTA PHI. 



Twenty-five years ago, when the outer eddies of this 
metropolis had hardly cu'cled to the spot where we are 
assembled to-night^ there met together in a village of 
central New York, within sight of the valley of the Mo- 
hawk, and of the blue hUls of Trenton, a little company 
of the students of Hamilton College, who counselled to- 
gether how they might help themselves forward in literary 
and social culture, outside of the academic discipline. It 
seemed to them that some new graft might be set upon 
the native stock of the College ; it seemed to them that 
such new graft might bear somewhat finer and juicier 
fruit than belonged to the parent stem. It would appear 
that the end justified their anticipations ; and scions from 
this new growth, with true American enterprise, were 
speedily set in half the colleges of the country, where they 
shot u]3 presently into permanent institutions, whose dele- 
gates have come here to-night, to celebrate an anniversary 
which marks the first quarter of a century. 

We recognize in this society a type of the American 
want, and of the democratic demand, for Association. A 
few congenial spirits come together ; a moderator is ap- 
pointed ; they discuss their needs ; they establish a con- 
'stitution to meet those needs ; they club their fands ; 
secretaries correspond ; chapters are formed ; conventions 
are called ; — we respect the authority and obey the sum- 



TWENTY-FIFTH ANNIVERSARY. 15 

mons ; all tlie more readily because it is so true an ex- 
pression of the national tendency. We love associative 
action ; it is the primordial law of our development ; we 
crystallize normally in that shape. The laminse overlay us 
everywhere. You cannot go so far away but you shall be 
enrolled in some Society — for printing campaign docu- 
ments — for horticulture — for repairing churches — for 
building railways. It is the source of our executive ener- 
gy. It makes the grand lifts along our republican level ; 
isolated, we are but pebbles on the shore ; but band us 
together by affinities we love and cherish, and there is a 
great sea-wall, over which the waters cannot come. 

Our Fraternity is, I say, a type of this associative 
energy ; and the more remarkable, perhaps, as having 
grown up under the wing of one of the few despotic re- 
gimes which are left to us : — I mean the necessarily des- 
potic regime of the College. The club stands related to 
the University, as an expression of young Eepublicanism 
in contrast with the rigidity of old forms. As if the 
American instinct for associative action — for ballo tings — 
for holding meetings — were too strong to be snuifed out 
utterly by the hand of discipline, and must show itself, 
and speak, and grow. I do not mean to imply that there 
is any necessary antagonism, further than the natural and 
healthful antagonism always existing between the fastness 
of young blood, and the inertia of old brains. 

I suppose I may say, without infringing upon the 
time-honored mystery of your cabalistic Greek, that the 
general object of this Association, as now constituted, is a 



16 ALPHA DELTA PHI. 

cultivation of those refinements of letters or of social feel- 
ing, which are to a certain extent ignored by the adminis- 
tration of the college. 

Under its regimen, a somewhat larger range is given 
to a man^s individuality of character ; his special intellec- 
tual impulses are not strained to the measure of a common 
standard, but his tastes are granted their particular di- 
vergences. Those club-rooms were quiet alcoves, where 
we used to try on the harness which our masters, with 
their Davies, and Playfair, and Plato, were fitting to our 
limbs. If too loose, they were taken in there ; if too 
tight, (which often happened,) they were loosened. 

I hope I shall give no offence to the younger members 
of the Fraternity, when I relate with what pride those 
College encounters with the Gog and Magog, that go 
about desolating human society, were regarded by us. 
For myself, my blood glows even now, at the thought 
of some chivalrous assault in those days, with the bor- 
rowed sword of Juvenal, upon some arrant usurper in the 
literary world ! How we mowed down whole ranks of 
people with a couplet of Horace ! And how surprisingly 
all these people recovered afterward : and what very nice 
people we thought them when we came to live among 
them, and to ask favors of them ! You will find there 
are a great many such bloodless victories outside of Col- 
leges : a great many dismal giants who thwack terribly — 
but always in private ! 

It involves a certain degree of hardihood to advocate, 
now-a-days, the refinements of letters ; the practical so 



TWENTY -FIFTH ANNIVERSARY. 17 

oversliadows and awes us. You and I value things very 
much for their palpable and manifest profit ; not con- 
sidering enough perhaps, what other, remoter, and larger 
profit may grow out of those meditations or studies, 
whose germinating power is slower, more delicate, and 
less easily traceable. 

Even in Science, we rank abstract and elemental 
ideas below positive and practical development. The man 
who maps the tides or the winds so as to shorten voyages 
this year or next, is more estimated than the individual 
who spends years in determining the position of certain 
new stars, in establishing the niceties of longitudinal 
difference, or discovering some new metallic base of an old 
earthy matter. And yet it is possible that the star-finder 
may be opening an investigation which shall simplify the 
whole subject of navigation ; or the delver in the earth — 
whose product is now only a new chemical fact to an- 
nounce — ^may live to see that particular fact revolutionize 
a whole branch of industry. The truth that simmered 
for fifty years under the Voltaic pile, in all that time 
serving only to give a shock to nervous people, or to fuse 
a bit of metal, blazed out at last : And now, it plays 
upon an iron web from city to city, over the world ; frail 
as the gossamer things we see on a summer^s morning, 
pendant from grass- tip to grass-tip — swaying in every 
breath of air — and yet, the bridges of thousands of airy 
messengers who carry their errands, and die. 

So too, I think there is something in a refined intel- 
lectual cultivation, and its processes, which, though it 



18 ALPHA DELTA PHI 

seems to lack practical relation, will blaze out some day 
in subtle flame, from many a man's mind and heart — 
refining character and action, and justifying itself by va- 
rious and rich accomplishment. 

Seeing, therefore, that certain special literary culture 
is one of the chiefest ends of your Fraternity, let us con- 
sider some of the aspects of literary endeavor at the pres- 
ent day ; what changes have come over it during those 
twenty-five years which end to-night ; what new tastes 
we have to deal with, and how these concern us, or we 
them. 

First, we remark the antagonism which is growing up 
between the merely classical aspects of Education and its 
present demands ; between the reformers and the dilet- 
tanti. The living languages are urged in place of the 
dead ; and the natural sciences in place of pure mathe- 
matics. M. Guizot and DeTocqueville are more eagerly 
read, than Cicero de Officiis ; their authority is counted 
greater than that of any of the old statists. Mr. Grrote 
is steeping us in Greek color and Greek sympathy, 
4 (with his earnest humanitarian and Christian philosophy 
superadded), as Thucydides and Herodotus have lost 
the power to do ; and Mebuhr has j)lucked all the 
marrow from Livy's hard, dry, glittering anatomy of 
Kome. 

It is more than suspected that the pretty Greek sep- 
ulchres, like sepulchres everywhere, contain a vast deal 
of deadness and of rottenness ; the classicists indeed argue 
for that eclectism of taste which finds suggestive mate- 



TWENTY-FIFTH ANNIVEKSARY. 19 

rial wherever there is force and beauty ; and Milton as- 
sures us that a good man, like Athanasius, could out of 
the slime of Aristophanes dredge the matter for a rousing 
sermon. But Athanasius was no undergraduate ; who, 
it is thought, would be much safer with the nebulge of 
Herschel than with those of Strepsiade and Cher- 
ephon. 

There is no fear, however, that past good things will 
be lost, although they may be supplanted in educational 
systems by the more lively new things. Good things and 
beautiful things do not die easily. They belong so far 
to the spirit and complexion of succeeding literature, 
that the curious, and all loving scholars will be con- 
stantly upon their track. If the student's thought is 
diverted to observation, measurement, and classification 
of those new geometric figures which belong to mineral 
crystallization, we still regard the charming clearness of 
Euclid's demonstrations as so many outline drawings, 
which the mind dwells upon with a certain artistic pleas- 
ure : and if we quote Homer no more, we hang his Frog- 
piece upon our walls, as a dainty cabinet picture, and 
harmonious bit of ancient coloring. 

Growing out of this antagonism, or at the least coin- 
cident with it, we note the every-day practical tone, 
which has latterly come to pervade literature gene- 
rally. 

Twenty-five years ago, and poor Sir Walter Scott was 
touching with his palsied, but beloved hand, the last 
gleams of that feudal splendor that shone from the corselet 



20 ALPHADELTAPHI. 

of Count Eobert of Paris. Sharon Turner had^ at about 
the same time, closed the old series of English Histories 
with his cumbrous quartos, which I believe every body- 
speaks well of, and nobody reads. Since that date, I 
think you can rarely fail to have observed a more inti- 
mate alliance of all literary endeavor — growing every 
hour closer and closer — with the wants of our every-day 
life, and its thorough incorporation with live things. 
The scholar, the romancist, the scientific man, are no 
longer a company apart. Their aims and records are of 
what we know and feel, and live by ; or they are shelved 
as curious specimens of vain work— Chinese carving, show- 
ing infinite detail of labor perhaps, but wanting the per- 
spective and foreshortening which make them true, and 
which body forth life. Mere metaphysics is dead. Chiv- 
alric tales, with however much of rhetorical spice in 
them, do not flame in our hearts, and kindle love there, 
and joy and wonder. Science must buckle itself to cloth- 
weaving or printing, or its story does not reach. Searchers 
after lost asteroids give way to the man, who with his 
magnetic battery, touches our fire-bells with curious, 
invisible stroke. The Doctors have, I think, given over 
the formulas of an old-time theology, for a preaching that 
swoops down on the bad things we do ; and not ujDon the 
possible bad things we might think, if we thought as 
somebody long ago is supposed to have thought. 

Dickens slays your niggardness and mine, with his 
cheery Christmas legends. There is no Jack the Giant- 
Killer — no bean stalk and castles ; but, the Circumlocu- 



TWENTY-FIFTH ANNIVERSARY. 21 

tion office, Foggy Chancery, and the man we all know so 
well — imposing Mr. Gradgrind ! 

What hope indeed to be read or listened to, if we 
do not point our thought where the world's thought is 
pointing ? We may sing a sweet song : but will people 
stay to listen ? A few very sweet — a Maud, a Hiawatha 
— may cheat us into a wayside delay ; but these are ex- 
ceptional. A rude campaign rhyme ringing with the 
jingle and clatter of to-day's march, may go even wider. 
Novels are writ full of some moral drawn from yester- 
day's news ; the imaginative man or woman must yoke 
themselves to the great processional advance, or their 
fine fancies and they are trampled down and forgotten. 

Compare Household Words with the Spectator, and 
you will see at a glance the difference I would bring to 
your notice. We do not absolutely give up our old 
friends, Will Honeycomb, Sir Koger, and the rest ; — 
we cherish their memories warmly ; but they are thor- 
oughly dead friends. If you try to make them live 
again, they will be ghosts only ; the world will laugh 
at your pets and their short clothes ; a single paragraph 
in a morning paper will blow them into limbo. 

So Dr. Primrose, that charming old gentleman whom 
we love, as we love a good family portrait — even Dr. 
Primrose is growing seedy. I doubt if our followers upon 
negro minstrelsy could be brought to laugh at Jenkins, 
or Moses, and his gross of spectacles. We have lived up 
to that level, and passed it by. The new excisemen 
take no cognizance of the gooseberry wine ; it is drawn 



22 ALPHA DELTA PHI. 

, too mild. The Yicar of Wakefield is not a tract any 
longer. 'Tis only liistory. 

The great literary caravan has trailed away from that 
pleasant country where the woods were soft and low ; 
where meadows lay green around homely places ; where 
morning larks soared from the dewy herbage, in serenest 
light and bubbled songs ; where gray hamlets lay scat- 
tered on the earth's bosom like children sleeping, and the 
parish bells woke from the hills holy lullabys. All this 
is left ; and the processional advance is under hot suns, 
with a harsh level around us ; where there is din and 
crash — swords of adventurers, new harems by the Salt 
Lake — tawny slave faces — stealthy murders, and mur- 
derers who sneer at, and balk us. They who are joined 
to that march under the intense atmosphere of to-day 
cannot dally and snuff at flowers. 

The five millions of readers and thinkers in America, 
feeling citizen rights — eager to establish famihes in 
comfort, if not in opulence — all of them heated by the 
fever of activity, want to give time and attention only 
to what concerns them nearly ; their relations to each 
other and the State ; something present, practical, and 
vital. They have no leisure for the vague, the insub- 
stantial, the apocryphal. A literature to reach them, 
and inoculate their thoughts, must be directed toward 
those grand topics, or seasoned with that large humanity 
which concerns all ; there must be something which is 
aired with life as they breathe it, and with freedom as they 
feel it. Your book — your treatise on popular astronomy. 



TWENTY-FIFTH ANNIVERSARY. 23 

your poem, if you please — your views on the judiciary — 
your discussion of music — your tals, has not found final 
judgment with respect to its fitness as an American 
document, till it has gone far out three thousand miles 
west of the sea, to the lands of new settlers, who lay your 
argument or your fancies, like a plummet, to the stature 
of their mental need ; who test it by that much of hope, 
of fulness, of joy it adds to their inner life. 

And now, seeing that literature and its aims have 
Leen drawing nearer to our every-day habit of thought, 
during these past twenty-five years ; — seeing that the 
atmosphere of books is less remote than it was, and 
extreme classicism withdrawn to a more frigid distance 
than ever before, it may be worth our while to enquire 
how we (who, as members of a literary fraternity, may be 
supposed to have some sort of literary labor in prospect) 
stand affected by the change ? 

Is cultivation like classicism, out-marched ? Is the 
standard lowered ? Or is it, that the horizon is only 
extended ; since readers and thinking men all, have come 
up to a higher level of observation ? 

I think you will readily agree with me that there 
was never a time, when there was need for more thor- 
ough and various cultivation than now. It may not 
indeed be the same sort of cultivation which once 
obtained. It may matter little to you to distinguish 
between the Ionic and Doric forms of speech ; matter 
little if you know whether Cicero plead for, or against the 
poet Archias ; matter little how much of Horace is in 



24 ALPHADELTAPHI. 

Sappliic— how inucli in Iambic measure ; but it may 
matter greatly to you to know, when Horace — if you read 
Mm — came near to that truth about men, and men's 
lives and passions, which never dies. It may matter 
nothing to know if JEneas or Turnus be the proper hero 
of Yirgirs Epic ; but it may matter greatly to know, 
when and by what illustrations he may have drawn a real 
hero— defending real wrongs, full of a real humanity ; 
or only a mock hero, who dies with the clang which an 
honest blow will ring, and ring again upon the shield 
of every pretender : we want that sort of cultivation 
which will enable its ]30ssessor to distinguish between 
sham and substance — between the true and the false — 
the things which help us really, and the things which 
brilliantly seem to. 

The literary man differs from others only in this : — 
he puts in words what others put in action. His culti- 
vation must apply itself to what is near to us — near our 
wants — near to our hope. The oaks stand by their own 
vigor, fed from their falling leaves ; the grain that shot up 
last spring-time wants your care. You may find imple- 
ments in classic stock, in old armories, where the glitter 
and order attract you ; but you have more to deal with 
than the blotches of rust, at which the classic conser- 
vators weary themselves, with file and acid. 

Your labor, if it is to tell, must tell other-wheres — 
your blows fall outside, on living wrongs — wrongs that 
scream at the touch. 

Ao;ain, there must be habit of close and unremitting 



TWENTY-FIFTH ANNIVERSARY. 25 

observation, wide wakefulness — a finger always upon the 
world's pulse. And to this end it is quite essential to a 
literary worker who is thoroughly in earnest, that he keep 
his station near to the heart of things. He must think 
much in cities. He must imbibe the movement where 
movement is strongest. That concentration which is ef- 
fected amidst the turmoil of the world, strikes straight 
and sharp to its aim ; but the concentration which comes 
of quietude, belongs to a pleasantly rarefied medium, and 
never gains the focal energy which burns things to their 
core. 

The outside observer may appreciate and enjoy — all 
the more strongly — because there is a constant calm about 
him. But he cannot from his outpost reach the centres 
effectively with either pen or tongue. He lives too slow- 
ly. People scent his rusticity a long way off. Quick as 
he may get the current of history, by steam or tele- 
graph, in the very moment when it turns from him back 
toward the centre, the arterial briskness is lost : it is 
heavy, sluggish, venous. It needs airing ; it must come 
to the great lungs of cities and seaports. 

But while the practical literary tendency of the day 
is, in a certain sense, antagonistic to an old and elegant 
classicism, I would not imply that it is utterly vagrant ; 
indeed, it was never subordinated to a more thorough 
and searching criticism than now. It may not be tried 
by the antique standards. The drama we act . is not 
judged by any effete law^ of the unities, but by its 
present Power. 



26 ALPHADELTAPHI. 

Are the men, men ? Are the women, women ? 
These are the questions we ask of whatever representa- 
tions of life our artists, preachers, authors set before 
us. Do the things they do, lie in the path of our capaci- 
ty ? ^ext, do they lie in the path of our duty ? 

This is the basis, I think, of most of modern criti- 
cism ; indeed, it is the natural result of that practical 
drift of the intellectism of our day, to which I have 
called your attention. We are going back nearer and 
nearer to the elemental principles of art. We are fling- 
ing off allegiance to conventional standards ; we are less 
attracted by the glitter of any feudal harness, and want 
to see the muscle, and nerve, and heart of the man who 
wears it. Horace Walpole, with his dim Otranto, is less 
now than Mr. Mayhew with his Poor of London. 

Some eighteen months ago, you listened from these 
same benches to the great satirist of our time, as he laid 
before you his gallery of historic pictures. How intently 
you watched, as he sketched the shadowy trifles, the 
every-day weaknesses, the talk, the banter, the follies of 
a Koyal household ! And yet it was for no pomp of de- 
scription that you gave your minds to him ; but for the 
exceeding truth and penetration with which he probed to 
the very marrow of their manhood — the royal subjects — 
tore away every kingly illusion, and set before you the 
men. 

But not only are our critical estimates broader and 
deeper, but in the last twenty-five years we have made 
great gains in all that pertains to aesthetic culture. 



TWENTY-FIFTH ANNIVERSARY. 27 

In art proper, we see the tendency toward elemental 
bases of opinion, in the existence of the Pre-Kaphaelite 
doctrine. This may be an extravagance ; but it is an 
extravagance in the right direction ; it is toward simplici- 
ty and truth. 

I think the humors of such classic sticklers as Le Brun, 
and even Poussin, have given way to a manner and treat- 
ment that storm our sensibilities, with no lance held in 
classic poise, no fanfaronade of gauntlets and trumpets, 
but only quiet, truthful nature. I think that in our 
Academy Grallery we are having every year less and less 
of impossible Strephons and Clorindas ; less of Miss 
Languish, and more of the material we look for in wives 
and daughters. I think the scenic pastorals, with their 
twin cows, orderly trees, and pretty water, are giving 
way to the meadows we know and love — to the mountains 
that dwarf us, and kindle worship. 

Of course there are platitudes still ; men who, with rare 
appreciation, lack the summa manus, the vis manutigii. 
But the intention of our art is becoming far more earnest. 
It is , running toward those essentials, and directed by 
those maxims which give it a universal character. 

A book or a picture may have a conventional charm, 
which will give it admirers, just now and here ; but only 
real trees, real water, real men, real passion, will please 
those who come in from without, or who belong to a gen- 
eration after us. 

And here, in connection with our art-tendencies, I 
cannot forbear to mention a name, which I am sure you 



28 ALPHA DELTA PHI. 

all know and res^^ect ; I mean that of John Kusldn. who 
is thoroughly a man of our time, and a bold type of that 
amalgamation of aesthetic aims with our life and every- 
day endeavor J at which I have hinted. 

He has done more than any man to bring the litera- 
ture of art from its vagueness and shadowy region, and 
to make out its determination by certain fixed principles. 
And in so doing; he has torn awav no oTace from the ar- 
tist-life, but rather sublimed it, by the union which he 
has demonstrated between its offices and our religion and 
faith ; and all that we reverence in truth and beauty 
everywhere. 

There is another noticeable thing about Mr. Ruskin, 
which I feel sure has made his name a welcome one to 
thoughtful Young America. He is always in earnest. 
He glows everywhere : the track of him is dyed deeply 
with his soul's life. Whether he flames into grandilo- 
quence, or stays you with his dogged iteration, he is 
aboundingly and gushingly full of the matter in hand. 
He has no half-feelings, or half-thoughts : all are rounded 
with the swell of a deep, devotional tide. 

He winds into his subject, whether painting or tem- 
ple, like a serpent ; and though you may lose his trail 
because you lack his enthusiasm^ you may be sure that 
he is winding his way up through columns, through colors, 
through domes ; and you shall see, by and by, in token 
of his progress, some gorgeous pennant of his rhetoric 
streaming from the top ! 

The jDrogress of aesthetic culture is to be seen more- 



TWENTY-FIFTH ANNIVERSAEY. 29 

over in other directions tlian in that of pure art. It is 
to be noted in our quickened perception and appreciation 
of the beauties of music, in our deeper and more enlight- 
ened understanding of its principles ; — in our nicer dis- 
tinction between those sounds which ]3lay melodiously 
about the ear ; and those others, which with fulness and 
density of meaning, gravitate to the soul^ and make inner 
symphonies there. 

In all our mechanic arts, we may observe a shrewd 
trade-perception of harmony of parts, and grace of form. 
Manufacturers find their profit in employing artists to 
design their patterns ; and the cheapest prints are nine- 
penny illustrations of Owen Jones' theory of color. 

Typography has made vast strides ; not only is there 
advance in the mere mechanism, but in the general taste 
which presides over the art of book-making. What 
would be thought now of those pitiful annuals and souve- 
nirs, with their lack-a-daisical faces, and pretty, impos- 
sible park scenes, which, twenty years ago, we gave to 
young Misses in leg-of-mutton sleeves, as tokens of ten- 
der and respectful affection ? Does any body give them, 
or print them now ? How poorly these would show be- 
side that story of Barley's Margaret, in which the genius 
of the artist has startled a dead author from his grave. 

How the whole art of wood-engraving has flashed out 
into piquancy and grace, carrying fulness and complete- 
ness of detail ! How we look out for things we wondered 
about ; faces of men w^e hear of, and seem to get at some- 
thing real — feeding our curiosity and art-love together. 



30 ALPHA DELTA PHI. 

Again, those wonderful sun-light pictures, bringing the 
rarest bits of landscape, and the infinite detail of Moor- 
ish or Venetian architecture to our study tables ; what 
quickeners and cultivators of our taste in this direction 
have these become ! A portfolio now is as good as a 
year's travel. 

Our homes again, whether we will or not, give tokens 
of our artistic longings, in their graceful adaptations for 
our comfort. Your very pottery is taking on forms of the 
best Etruscan art, and you pour your tea from some dup- 
licate of the wine-pot of Sallust. 

And how widely, and how tenderly this aesthetic spirit 
has breathed over those other homes, where our ambitions, 
and rivalries, and earnestness all end at last. 

There may be even here, sometimes, tasteless blazon 
of marble — ostentation clamoring against the silence ; but 
we forgive it for the love that shines in it ; and as for the 
trees, the flowers, the sheltering vines, thank God ! these 
are never tasteless ! They bind up a holy and fragrant 
alliance of all that is beautiful without, with all that is 
hopeful within ; and to you, to me, to all whose memories 
run ever to those silent places, the flowers, and vines, and 
trees, must bring with every repeated season, a tenderly 
repeated promise, that the dead will not be always dead ! 

We observe then, with respect to the literary tenden- 
cies of the day, that they are characterized by a vital 
earnestness ; that their aims are present and active, not 
reflective and abstract. We observe, that our past habit 



TWENTY -FIRST ANNIVERSARY. 31 

of American life lias impressed itself upon the whole tone 
of intellective action ; and we can bridle its swiftness by 
no classic erudition^ by no mere educational dogmas. We 
cannot bridle it at all. Guide it, however, we may, by 
that wakeful and thorough cultivation, which, without 
ignoring popular extravagances, is no way blinded by 
splendid falsities ; and which reckons up the value of 
your poem or mine, your picture or mine, your sermon or 
mine — not by any laws of old schools, not by any theo- 
logic dogmas, but by the simple, earnest, hearty, helpful 
truth, that may shine there. 

I will not close without bringing to notice, that other 
aim of your association, which looks to social improvement. 
I think we are needy in that way — most of all at an edu- 
cational age. We want something to defeat, or rather 
qualify that old, hard bookishness which once belonged, 
and was thought necessary to every scholarly man ; some- 
thing to make him supple ; something to give pliancy to 
nerve and adroitness to strength. 

I think I am not mistaken in supposing the Fraternity 
wakeful to that good which lies in a good manner, unit- 
ing kindliness with ease. The man of the cloister cannot 
meet the everj^-day want, until he has taken on somewhat 
of the every-day pliancy and aptitude. Without it he 
chafes at his unfitness, perhaps consoles himself with the 
barren thought of possessing weightier truth, fuller 
knowledge, deeper insight than the man of the world. 
But that world-knowledge, which gives a tongue to learn- 
ing, which supplies the magnetism of look and presence, 



32 ALPHA DELTA PHI. 

and wMch ensures confidence in action, is no way inconsis- 
tent with large acquirement. No man can be thoroughly- 
practical — up to the level of American requirement — 
who does not constantly and habitually bring his attain- 
mentSj however various they may be, to the test of out- 
side — every-day — familiar discussion and analysis. 

And here I may take occasion to say, that there is, or 
was a scholastic stiffness, which preserved itself and fed 
itself, by sneering at the opinions or the criticism of such 
society as is enlivened by the graces of women. In our 
world of equal condition, where the great social conserva- 
tor is the respect we habitually show to the sex, nothing 
could be weaker or more ill-judged. You may distrust at 
once the manly aptitude and thorough cultivation of that 
individual, who whatever his boasts or professions may 
be, sneers at the opinions of intelligent women. 

Nor do I think that your scholastic prig really enter- 
tains the contempt he may affect. He finds it hard to 
break down or to break through the retirement and the 
reticence of his desk-life. He feels an irritating sense of 
his inaptness to carry his learning gracefully into the so- 
cial arena, and soothes his mortified vanity with the pret- 
tiness of a sarcasm. 

This might do for the old-fashioned schoolmasters ; 
but it is too late now. Too many princes of learning, 
too many veterans of science are among us, familiarly, 
illustrating by manner, and by talk, the fulness of their 
accomplishment, and the modesty of real attainment. 
We cannot worship any longer the scholarship which en- 



TWENTY-FIFTH ANNIVERSARY. 33 

thrones itself in seclusion, and wears only the clumsy 
buckram of books. 

Again, a friendliness and good fellowship spring out of 
the club-socialities of college, which we need to keep and 
carry with us. We repubhcans are prone to a harsh kind 
of social disintegration. We associate for furtherance of 
scientific, political, religious aims ; but we do not bring 
our affections to the compact. Even kinship does not 
hold us together. We need certain rallying channels 
wherein our kindly feelings may group themselves, and 
recover their electrical forces by attrition. 

Older countries possess in their castes and clanships, 
in their ancestral attachments and common pride, constant 
promoters of fellow feeling, as between those of the same 
Classes. We lack all this : we carry our independence as 
citizens into a kind of cold, isolating indifference. We 
are constantly forcing our equality into an imperti- 
nent assertion of manner that outrages fellowship ; as if 
making one's self disagreeable were upon the whole the 
best possible way of saying, " I am as good as you ! '' 

I pray you, gentlemen, frown on this ! It is common, 
and it is despicable. A great many ardent boasters of 
our institutions are nervously anxious under the social 
juxtaposition which belongs to their development. They 
are sighing to make themselves exceptional ; haunted 
with the phantom of some social superiority, which shall 
be so marked as to sting outsiders into acquiescence. 
That man who is constantly fretting, lest he be not made 
2 



34 ALPHA DELTA PHI. 

enougli of, either intellectually or socially, had better set 
himself to find some surer position both ways ! 

I am afraid we have made our most sorry figure 
abroad, by this undue insistance on our status ; a too 
quick scent for imagined affronts ; as if a man could be 
any thing less than he really is, except he himself give 
cause. 

A simple republican citizen ! that any man should 
chafe at that, who has American blood in his veins, or 
try to round it into something over-decorous ; something 
whereby he may astonish, and make the ignorant ones 
gape, and the cultivated smile ! 

Have we not a national sore of this sort which needs 
caustic and excoriation ? 

After all, what a world of impertinences, ill-man- 
ners, affectations would pass away from us, if only we 
would accept that oldest, simplest, best law of good fel- 
lowship, — about being kind to others, as we would have 
others kind to us ! Is there not room imder this for 
republican manhood to dilate and take stature and dig- 
nity ? 

There is a virtue in those little every-day courtesies 
of man to man, of which we are nationally forgetful. 
They dignify each one's sense of his personality; they 
stimulate the moral health of the nation ; they carry a 
cheery glow everywhere ; they make a constant, unno- 
ticed, teeming sunshine — a stray gleam here, and a stray 
gleam there — but in the aggregate, making a great har- 
vest swell ! 



TWENTY-FIFTH ANNIVERSARY. 35 

We admire sj^lendid and startling charities, but ig- 
nore the lesser ones, which give a right social animus to 
life. I think there are American names associated with 
great simple acts of beneficence, which I should need 
only to mention, to call down plaudits. We yield all the 
length and depth of our sympathy in the applause, and 
think it a good deed in us — well over. We go out to 
forget our own way-side, social charities — of indulgence, 
forbearance, regard for others, a day-long and life-long 
living up toward the level of our plaudit. 

How our hearts yearned toward that fair English wo- 
man, who crossed seas to give comfort amid the Turkish 
war-scenes ! Had she come hither, I hardly dare say 
what might have been the expression of our admiration. 
I think we should have dragged her carriage through our 
streets. I think we should have made some splendid 
gift of plate. I am afraid we should have forgotten all 
in some municipal imbroglio. I fear we should not have 
funded our admiration in any great hospital endowment. 
They have done this, you know, over seas. How august 
and grand — it seems to rise amid the fog and smoke of 
London ^ — soaring in the eye of faith, higher than any 
Victoria tower ; that monument of a tender beneficence, 
wherein children's voices, for generations and generations, 
shall call down blessings on the name of Florence Night- 
ingale ! 

And yet you — if I might venture a word outside of the 
Fraternity — you who have brought your womanly smile 
and countenance to cheer us here to-night, can act the 



36 ALPHA DELTA PHI. 

cliarity over : can graft all its noMlitVj if not its notice, 
upon your social intercourse — in ever so little kindnesses : 
regard for the wishes and feelings of others — a constant 
leaven of charity, which will make duty rise to noble- 
ness. 

And you, gentlemen of the Fraternity, remember that 
we have other brothers in the world beside those of our 
Society : do not forget — do not limit good fellowship. 

The literaiy and social league which ties us together, 
is, after all, but the educational programme of something 
to do in life. You will easily slip away — easier than you 
now think — from the specialities of this College alliance ; 
— be out of the range of its provisions — be engrossed with 
quite other interests. It will seem to you — as I ven- 
ture to say it seemed to me — but a rich vine hiding the 
roughness of the old walls which once sheltered us, and 
nodding welcome from its leaves of green. 

But let the faith and courage its exercises may have 
taught, go with you. Eemember that there is a degree 
of swift vitality in this American world of ours, which 
calls for something more than the slow processes of 
schools — or the severity of classicism — which demands 
the practical, the earnest, the helpful. But though the 
classicism you love may be outrim — holding place only 
like the shrined saints on Papish road-side, whereat vo- 
taries bow, say prayers, and hurry on — remember that 
cultivation of other kinds is still demanded : that a 
judgment refined by much study still presides over all 
that is well done : that an enlightened criticism will at- 



TWENTY-FIFTH ANNIVERSARY. 37 

tend you — quick to the necessities of the hour, and based 
upon those enduring and substantial principles of art, 
which pervade all thinking minds at this day. 

Kemember, that the taste which is expressing itself in 
ever new and improving forms all around us, will have 
its measure upon your accomplishment. 

Kemember, we have this great scheme of Eepub- 
licanism to carry out in our lives — to keep warm in our 
hearts. All its contrasts — its wantings — its hardnesses — 
its stains are ours, as truly as its spread and its promise. 

Live up to the level of your best thought ; keep the 
line of your life tense and true ; it is but a thread ; but 
it belongs to the great Kepublican warp, where Time is 
weaving a Nation. You cannot alter its attachment yon- 
der, to the past — nor yonder, to the unrolling years. The 
shuttle of to-day is flying swift — knitting blotches — 
knitting beauties ; and if you would broider such things 
there as will stand fast, and carry your name worthily 
upon the roll of history, you will have need of all your 
Energy to dare — of all your Cultivation to refine — of all 
your Charity to ennoble ! 



The President then presented as the Poet of the evening. 
Bro. William C. Williamson, tvIio proceeded to read 



i$\xt ^rr^an. 



THE SPIRITS. 

YE whose heads are white with honored years — 
Who reverence still the dreams that youth reveres, — 
And ye who stay but for the morrow's breeze 
To launch your skiffs on life's empurpled seas — 
Welcome, and hail ! To-night give fancy rein. 
Forget your beards, be Freshmen once again ! 

When, glad at heart, we left the studious shade, 

The last book closed — if not the last bill paid, — 

Ere the old trees their benediction said. 

In shadows trembling on the Senior's head, 

While, like young Theseus, sworded for the strife, 

We paused before the Labyrinth of life, — 

Some Ariadne of those happy days 

Gave us her thread to take through Time's dark maze ; 

So, wheresoe'r our winding footsteps turn, 

One vestal faith within our breasts might burn. 

One memory fire the weary eyes of age. 



T W E N T Y - F I F T H ANNIVERSARY. 39 

Till our stars rise on the Trienniars page. 
Let the world's Circe put forth all her charms, 
We're home to-night in Alpha Delta's arms ! 

See, as I speak, Time's gathered vapors rise, 
The dear old scenes leap freshly to our eyes ; 
Again we stroll beneath the elm's soft glooms, 
Again we tap at well-remembered rooms, 
Again the quivering fire-light leaps and falls 
On student iaces, and on antiq[ue walls, — 
The foil— the glove — the Frenchy picture there — 
The brown-bowled pipe — the wide-embracing chair — 
The wit that shines — the song, whose stanzas pour 
Their dangerous quavers to the proctor's door ; — 
The day of cares was but a winter's day, 
Night's jovial Lethe swept them all away ! 

Though when we pause to turn a longing eye 
Up the bright vista of the years gone by. 
Some face we miss at memory's opened door. 
And some old cheery voice is heard no more, — 
Soft as spring showers on grass our tears shall fall, 
Oh ! dark and sad ! — yet consecrating all. 

In this swift age, when art's surpassing flight 
Leaves time behind, and nature out of sio^ht. 
What secret spirit heads the rushing throng, 
The wild shrill solo of the chorused song .? 



40 ALPHA DELTA PHI. 

Let me, who fear to swim where fast and wide, 
The broad-mouthed river laps the ocean tide, 
In slenderest shallop, or on lighted wing, 
Trace the great torrent to its mountain- spring ; 
Let me, whose hand has no Apelles' power 
To paint with flames this genius of the hour, 
Be first content, my thread of light to cast 
On the dull arras of its grand old past. 

The cold Atlantic, with untiring roar. 

In long gray surges beats on Plymouth shore ; 

Dark choirs of pines, in bands of foamy snow, 

Chant solemn requiems to the waves below ; 

Through the still night the white wolf cries for blood 

Down dark ravine, and solitary wood : 

On this rough coast, by sea-gales scarred and torn, 

While shrill December reigned — the child was born. 

Speak, ancient page ! EoU back the mighty years. 
Let thy sweet accents linger on our ears : 
No soothing words, no kind delighted face 
Keceived the infant with love's warm embrace ; — 
A bleak, rough rock — the sea — the frosty air — 
Unbending forms — and lips compressed with prayer — 
Faces where virtue burned like passion's rage — 
These were thy sponsors — Spirit of our age ! 

Child of the past ! thy children love to trace 
The dim beginning of thy splendid race^ — 



TWENTY-FIFTH ANNIVERSARY. 41 

Draw back the veil ! on grooves of clinking rhyme, 
Slide in the picture of the good old time. 

Ghost of the year, from darkened day to day, 
December steps and glides in storms away. 
When the low-rising sun sinks dimly down, 
And night binds on her steel and starry crown. 
When, from the red Aurora of the north 
The wind's resistless forces wander forth. 
When on the shore the billows roar and seethe 
And champ the bitter sand with foamy teeth, 
When the beams crack, as, with their piercing beak. 
The hungry gusts an easy entrance seek, — 
Then white-lipped famine whispers, food is gone, — 
Then life is measured out in grains of corn, — 
Then pale disease, awaked from weary rest. 
Sits by each hearth-stone, the familiar guest, — 
Then the dear features, and the tuneful tongue 
Are missed — how keenly ! when the psalm is sung. 

But in the black corolla of the storm 
The Bow of Promise blossoms into form, — 
And, like a sweet face on quaint gargoyles set, 
They find the mother tongue in Samoset ; 
From Massasoit they take a life-long lease, 
And smoke the treaty in a pipe of peace. 

Then came the strong-willed man, who, through the night 
Of thick delusion, caught the heavenly light ; 



42 ALPHA DELTA PHI. 

Who turned from bigot sect, and first dared preach 
Freedom of thought, of conscience, and of S23eech ; 
Who broke the shackles of a church and creed 
That bind their members till their arteries bleed, 
That flesh their whips in unbelievers^ backs. 
And stretch their brethren on dogmatic racks ; 
Who first proclaimed that every man of sin, 
To find the one true church, must knock within ; 
Who washed with charity the skin of tan. 
And in the low-browed savage owned the man. 
Strike forty Grenerals from thy roll, Fame, 
Leave one fair page for Roger Williams' name ! 

The years flow by. Lo, in the twilight glooms, 
Here sail the witches, riding on their brooms ; 
From Salem woods the mounted squadron comes, 
And Mather feels a pricking of the thumbs. 
They wear no hoops — those fascinating sins, — 
But, with lean fingers brandishing their pins. 
In at strange holes, where winter's wind can't strive. 
Straight through the house the haggard witches drive ! 

A winter night. A veil is on the town : 
Whitening the darkness as it wavers down. 
On tree, on roof, on smooth-trod paths below, 
A living silence, falls the feathered snow. 
Yalley and woodland, hill and open field. 
The broad blue brook, hermetically sealed. 



T W E N T Y - F I F T H ANNIVERSARY. 43 

Black rock, green twig, — to give no cause for blame, 
With one dull brush it paints them all the same : 
Changed at its touch, yon tree-trunks, charred and stark, 
Seem white-haired giants, parleying in the dark ! 
Kound windy nooks the whirling spray is blown, 
It combs in billows o'er the fence of stone, 
On the lone hill-side, by the plunging waves, 
It folds its white wings on the Pilgrim graves. 
It storms the house of logs, it shakes the door, 
Sifts through the cracks and melts along the floor. 



But they within — what care they for the storm ? 
The hearth's great heart is glowing full and warm. 
The beckoning flames a crackling welcome call 
To shadows dancing on the dingy wall, 
And voices mingle with the fire's warm drone, 
Man's hopeful words and woman's patient tone. 

At length the father stalks across the floor, 
Shoves the oak bar that barricades the door, 
Knocks the last ashes from his pipe of delf, 
Then lifts the Bible from its corner shelf : 
That plethoric book, in massive ox-hide bound, 
By pious thumbs of half a century browned, 
Wherein, like rivers by spring freshets vexed. 
Through narrow margins runs a turbid text. 
Slowly he reads : the unleashed winds without 
Bay through the woods, and down the chimney shout, 



44 ALPHA DELTA PHI. 

The snow-rack^ surging on the maddened air^ 
Muffles his reading, brushes out the prayer : 
But Sleep, at last, his death-like stillness brings, 
And folds the household in his brooding wings. 

Hark ! in the frightful pauses of the gale 
Comes a wild outcry, like a tiger's wail ! 
Was it the shrieking of the storm, or prowls 
Some famished wolf before the door and howls ? 
Again, more near it comes — more keenly plain — 
'Tis the sharp war-whoop stabs the sleeping brain ! 

Then starts the father from his sleepless bed, 
Hears at the door low sounds and stealthy tread. 
Sees the peaked flames stretch upward from the town,- 
Again — again — above the wind is borne 
That fearful whoop, that far out-yells the storm. 
And all is fear, and struggle, and alarm. 

The scene is changed. Far north, towards Canada, 
A band of captives take their hopeless way. 
Take their long way, with fainting steps and slow. 
And crimson foot-prints stain the bitter snow. 

Still did that quenchless spirit that informed 
The heart of nature, till it glowed and warmed, 
Through the long night of cold misfortune, beat 
Into its children's veins its life and heat. 



TWENTY-FIFTH ANNIVERSARY. 45 

Where'er tlie sea holds parley with the land, 

I trace its steps along the winding strand ; 

I hear its voice to thousand echoes break 

The frozen silence of the northern lake, — 

Where wind-swept forests sing a lonesome tune, 

Where crisp snow gleams beneath the sickle moon, 

And dotted lines, far up the mountain's back. 

Show the deer's trail, or moose's swinging track. 

I hear its voice by some wild river's marge, 

As through the reefs it drives the birchen barge. 

Or when its rifles, up the lane of green, 

Crack into shreds the stillness of the scene. 

And southward, where the stars shine dim and calm, 

Where Mississippi rolls through groves of balm. 

And, with ambrosial hair, the virgin vine 

Twines round the reverend shoulder of the pine. 

That sweeps the waters with his beard of moss, — 

I feel its presence in that wooden cross ! 

With dauntless eyes, and with a breast all scars, 

I watch it, rallying from the Indian wars. 

And where the morning's trembling sunbeams dance 

On the long guns and fleur de lis of France, 

Leagued with the tomahawk and scalping knife, 

I see its armies, rushing to the strife, 

Wage in the woods' dark jaws the stealthy fight, 

Or climb the snows of Abraham's fatal height. 

When, later still, that sterner summons comes. 
O'er spring's cool meadows throb the feverish drums, 



46 ALPHA DELTA PHI. 

And horsemen, white with news from Lexington, 
Sow the quick tidings of the fight begun, 
When, left his ploughshare in the curling sod, 
The farmer hurries up the homeward road. 
When the young wife, who dares not have him staj^, 
Chokes her poor grief and speeds him on his way. 
With tearful eyes, that leave some flecks of rust 
On the bright steel her trembling fingers dust. 
She speaks farewell, and, watching at the door, 
Follows her soldier, who returns no more. 

Exit the Past. Present, make thy bow, 
bustling, striving, noisy, glorious Now ! 
How stands thy record ? does the spirit, grown 
Towards full maturity, still hold its own — 
True to itself, though now its bursting life. 
Like thrifty orchards, needs the pruning-knife ? 

^ age of steam, of business, and of work. 
On thy swift wheel what noble souls are broke ! 
stage, whose heroes all are stalking facts, 
No rill of music runs between thy acts, — 
Age of machines ! from thee has fancy fled. 
Song breathes her last, and chivalry is dead ! ' 

So sighs the miss, whose pretty cheek is pale. 
From vigils kept beside the last new tale ; 
So speaks the clerk, whose chalky temples throb 
At the grand chapters of Sylvanus Cobb. 



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TWENTY-FIFTH ANNIVERSARY. 47 

chivalry, what humbug in thy name ! 
And in thy knight, of transcendental fame — 
That thing in mail — that gentleman of force — 
Who fleeced his country on a stolen horse ! 
Give him his j)oint in time's slow-h ending arc — 
That farthing rush-light in the general dark — 
Yet not forget, though oft our flag of stars 
Turns to the light its pertinacious Mars, 
When jealous honor starts at false alarms — 
No rampant lions stain our country's arms ! 



Is Fancy fled ? Does life's high knighthood sink 
To lowest zero at the hammer's clink ? 
Is steel less true because it springs our beds, 
And stitches coats, instead of slashing heads ? 
Are there no soothing notes in labor's din, 
Nor simple legend in the strong machine ? 



'Tis but a rill at first, that hardly flows 
From the cold bosom of Canadian snows. 
Till, staggering with ungoverned strength, it feels. 
And grasps, and whirls Invention's mazy wheels. 
And, myriad-handed, spreads before our eyes, 
The loom's long fabric, flushed with Tyrian dyes. 

Pleasant the sights it sees, as, crawling down. 
The river grows from forest on to town ; 



48 ALPHA DELTA PHI. 

When througli bare bouglis the stars of April shine, 

Or June's hot twilight drains the sunset's wine. 

When deep in August grass, the mower laves 

His brown hard forehead in its crinkling waves, 

Or, in some dark and pickerel-haunted nook, 

Where its slow current intersects the brook. 

The shy pond-lilies, which like nuns retire, 

With petals white enfold their hearts of fire, 

Or under naves of lofty fresco rolled 

When sharp October smites the trees to gold ; 

Till, come at last beneath the factory's roof. 

It drops and trembles into warp and woof, 

And tells its hues and j)ictured stories o'er, 

In woven damask, on the parlor floor ! 

Is Fancy fled ? In ancient time the oak 
With groans responded to the woodman's stroke. 
The spreading beech its homely Dryad crowned, 
Who clapped her green palms when the wind came round ; 
In pensive laurel rustic eyes discerned 
A modest Daphne into timber turned. 
But our bold spirits scorn the living sap, 
In deadest wood they're found on constant taj). 
When the male medium, or itinerant girl, 
Sets, with a touch, the tables in a whirl ! 

0, Cotton Mather ! Witchcraft rules us yet, 
Eound common sense her filmy nets are set, — 



TWENTY- FJFTH ANNIVERSARY. 49 

Brush off the web — the monster still remains — 
The black, shy spider of unfurnished brains ! 

So with good men, who raise the temperance shout, 
And by Maine law drive ardent spirits out ! 
They run — they fly — but straight they reappear — 
Changed from a beverage to a panacea ! 

Pay fifty cents and see Death's curtain furled ; 

Take a pit ticket to the spirit world ! 

Let Mrs. BKmber ask of you or me 

To meet "the sage of Tusculum" at tea ; 

And, thou maid — whose literary greens 

Are served up — monthly — in our magazines ; 

Thou poet ! soaring on spasmodic wing, 

Who tak'st such dreadful measures with the spring — 

When, at dead night, the belfry's awful Twelve 

Sends to the doom of life the ghost and elve, 

Then lend the spirits your long ears — I beg ; 

You'll find Lord Byron in the table leg, 

While Bacon, summoned from the mouldering dead. 

Drums, like a partridge, on its varnished lid ! 

Thus Keason slaves, but Fancy wanders free, 
The leaves may change — 'tis still the same old tree ; 
Still round its trunk some graceful tendrils twine, 
Chivalric deeds and flowers of Palestine. 

Now on the Tauric hills the fight is done, 
Up their steep slopes the armed spring comes on, 
4 



50 ALPHA DELTA PHI. 

The long grass waves its banners o'er the field, — 

The olive blossoms where the armies wheeled. 

But when the soldier, torn by hissing shot, 

Felt on his fainting breast the life-blood hot, 

And, snatched in rough haste from the ranks of dead, 

Lay, wan and wasted, on the army bed. 

And, in the wandering of a long despair, 

Cried for one breath of England's quiet air, — 

Did she as angel, or as woman, come, 

Who soothed his ear with tender tones of home. 

Drew from his burning brow the fever's heat. 

With touch as gentle as her name is sweet ? 

red-armed War ! before thy lurid flame 
Had burned its last, this meek-eyed conqueror came ! 
The years shall pass, but — at his grandchild's door, 
When the last soldier tells his battles o'er, — 
Kind thoughts shall cluster round that saintly head, 
And children's thanks by children's lips be said, 
And from our foreign shore shall not this gale 
Waft thee our blessing — Florexce Nightingale ? 

Come nearer home — come closer to our hearts ! 
Though from the east the grand old knight departs. 
See — he still lingers on our western shore — 
Peace has her Kichard and her Agincourt ! 

From Arctic seas, that coil their serpent backs 
Round the green ice-berg till it nods and cracks, 



TWENTY-FIFTH ANNIVERSARY. 51 

Througli tlie salt fields where fog-banks cower and creep — 

Ghosts of dead storms — along the breathless deep, 

A ship sails home — what though the hope has failed 

That swelled her canvas when from porfc she sailed ? 

A nobler glory, and a brighter fame, 

Play round her spars and light her Captain's name ! 

sweet the hour when memory's gentle chime 
Tolls back the spirit to a happier time, 
And sweet his thoughts, who, when few years remain, 
Tossed like a sailor on life's changeful main. 
From the green lanes of youth long time exiled. 
Comes to the church that awed him when a child ; 
Sweeter his dreams, who, from a foreign strand, 
Smells the warm odors of his native land, 
Sees its dim outline through the blue sea-air. 
And knows one heart is kneeling for him there ! 

Life's war abates ; the Hero sleeps 

Beneath the orange and the palm ; 
The warm wind of the Tropics creeps 
Kound all the island's purple steeps ; 
His eyes are closed, his breast is calm. 

But when the ice-floe crashed and boomed. 
And strong hearts sunk, and eyes grew wild ; 

When white on white the mountains loomed, 

In the long Arctic night entombed, 
His face was firm, his voice was mild. 



52 A L P H A D E L T A P H I . 

His front was crossed with glory's scars ; 

His watchword — Hope ; his creed — To dare ; 
And still, beneath the shivering stars, 
Or beaten by the storm's rude jars, 

They knew his courage, heard his prayer. 

They bring thy dead knight home ; in vain 

country ! do thy quick tears flow ; 
The large of faith, and work, and brain, — 
write among thy heroes — Kane ! 
His fame shall live like Arctic snow. 

We quaff excitement as the Bursch drinks ale, 
We hate the past — 'tis but a last year's tale ; 
See — born of night, in plain and humid dress, 
Fresh as a fountain, streams the morning press. 
And from each leaf some new sensation doles, — 
Mysterious Murder comes with buttered rolls, 
We sip with tea the Monstrous Fraud Exposed, 
Dine on the wretch whose life the law has closed. 
And with diurnal luxuries like these — 
Who cares for Hannah More or Socrates .^ 

Then License blows his lawless trump, and bawls 
" Eaze to the earth the old established waUs ! 
Draw swords, fanatics, run old custom through ! 
Blot out the past, there is no god but jN'ew ! " 

But, sweet dames, who talk of woman's doom. 
And take your costume from the verb — to bloom, 



T W E N T Y - F I F T H ANNIVERSARY. 53 

Who hold conventions, and with endless reach 
Of furious logic, urge your right of speech, — 
The stanchest ship may yield in windy fights, 
We strike our flag and bend to women's rights. 
Let, if we must, her face in court be seen, 
With affidavits and a bag of green ; 
Her lips, we know, would prove that day is night, 
Persuade the sun he's worse than candle light. 
To save her client. Lo, beneath their sway, 
The tortured law looks just the other way, 
And the charmed jury sink, her willing slaves, 
Till Coke and Blackstone shudder in their graves ! 
Or — Shade of Baxter ! let her sermonize, — 
What knave could blink the judgment of her eyes ! 
Liberal in doctrine, let her ne'er be loth 
To lash with scorn her sisters of the cloth. 
And, with new fashions skilful to beguile. 
Dress her discourses in the latest style, 
Work dreamy sermons of embroidered talk 
Like pattern Samuels done in worsted work. 
ye strong-minded ! Be ye what ye will, 
Lawyer or preacher, — we can suffer still. 
Take any shape beneath the frantic moon — 
But only, do not take the pantaloon ! 

But all thy faults, spirit of our time, 
A little sharpened here to point the rhyme, — 
How they all melt and dwindle as we gaze. 
Like shreds of clouds before thy stronger rays ! 



54 ALPHA DELTA PHI. 

Hail to thy Future ! when yon sohtude, 
Where now the cougar hugs her savage brood, 
Yon wilderness, where now the prairie grass 
Parts its green lips to drink the winds that pass, 
Yon boundless wastes beyond that rocky crest 
Which frowns defiance over east and west, 
And even that island of the southern main, 
The last pawned jewel of the beggar, Spain, — 
Shall hear thy voice, shall feel thy coming tread, 
And start, with all their centuries, from the dead. 

Let the great morning of thy face be brought, 
Onward and on, from peak to peak of thought, 
Go forth, and let thy noon's full glory fall, 
To touch, and thrill, and warm, and gladden all ! 



m 



Vork, a graduate „,en,ber of the Dal!; 'n '^""^' °' "^'^"^ 
man, andBro T T„™ Tr " '"'™°"*'' Chapter, as Chair- 

attending in person cor,.r,tT! . ^"^''S'^""'"' Prevented his 
and advalin":;:?!? T ^™'"°'*' ""^ "^ ""'■""^'' 

f--tedLie;n:!:;:.rr:ri;:tT 
— Hed at . l:::: : r; ? t '" r-^-^^-- ^' 

The accumulation nfh. ■ adjourDed si.i^ rf,>. 

o^a Wide « ;:z:rr "^"" ^'^ ^""-^'^^^-^-^ 

0^ course, no detail can uTulZ Tf"^' ''''''''' '^ 
cielegates fro,n the various Cha^ 'her! ! "'""""^ 

graduate naembers from New Y„i . - , " ^'■'''"* ™"'^- 
-husias. and good f:^;,':'.: ""'''' ""^ '"^ "•"'-' 



I 



The Dinner took place at the Metropolitan Hotel, on the 
evening of Thursday. At eight o'clock one hundred and fifty 
members, graduate and undergraduate, assembled around the 
table. The Rev. Joseph P. Thompson, D. D., ex-President 
of the Fraternity, presided. 

When the cloth was removed, the whole company united in 
singing the Fraternity song, Xai.pe, A\<^a AeXra ^l, after which 
Dr. Thompson having expressed his regret at the unavoidable 
absence of the President, made a few introductory remarks and 
proceeded to call for the regular toasts of the evening. These 
were given in the following order, and between the speeches 
many of the Fraternity songs were sung, to the accompaniment of 
Dodworth's band. 

1. The Fraternity of Alpha Delta Phi. 

Responded to by Hon. A, K. Hadley, Hamilton, class 
of 1837. 

2. The 7)iemory of the departed. 

Drunk standing and in silence. 

3. Our Orator. 

Responded to by Donald G. Mitchell, Yale, class of 
1841. 



TWENTY-FIFTH ANNIVEKSARY. 57 

4. Our Poet. 

Responded to by Wm. C. Williamson, HarvHvd class 
of 1852. 

5. Our President, Bev. Br. Story s. 

Drunk with cheei-s. 

6. The Hamilton Chapter. 

Responded to by Jas. 0. Noyes, M. D., class of 1850. 

7. The Yale Chapter. 

Responded to by John D. Sherwood, class of 1839. 

8. The Amherst Chapter. 

Responded to by Rev. J. E. Rockwell, class of 1837. 

9. Tlie, Defunct Chapters. 

Responded to bv Benj. T. Kissam, Columbia, class of 
1838. 

10. The Miami Chapter. 

11. The Brunonian Chapter. 

Responded to by Geo. Wm. Curtis, class of 1848. 

12. The Williams Chapter. 

Responded to by T. A. Gardner, class of 1853. 

13. The Harvard Chapter. 

Responded to by J. C. Carter, class of 1 850. 

14. The Geneva Chapter. 

Responded to by Chas. N. Hewitt, class of 1856. 

15. The Bowdoin Chapter. 

Responded to by G. C. Moses, class of 1856. 



58 ALPHADELTAPHI. 

16. The Peninsular Cliapte7\ 

Responded to by G. P. Androus, class of 1846. 

17. Tlie Dartmouth Chapter. 

Responded to by Robt. L. Colby, class of 1846 

18. The Empire Chapter. 

Responded to by Cephas B. Crane, class of 1858. 

19. The Alabama Chapter. 

Responded to by D. G. Mitchell, Yale, class of 1841. 

20. The Manhattan Chapter. 

Responded to by J. Lyman Van Buren, class of 1856. 

21. Tlie Middletown Chapter. 

Responded to by J. AVheaton SxMith, class of 185V. 

After the regular toasts were concluded, many volunteer 
sentiments were offered, to most of which responses were re- 
ceived — and these exercises, mingled with singing, continued till 
one o'clock, when the whole company, having joined hands 
around the table, united in the parting song and doxology, and 
the regular assembly broke up. But many of the brothers still 
lingered, and speeches, music, and genial conversation filled the 
time so pleasantly that it was three in the morning before tlie 
party finally separated, and the Anniversary ceremonies were 
over. 

It will be impossible for any one not present at the Anniver- 
sary to form any adequate idea of the deep interest and cordial 
harmony that pervaded the discussions of the Business Convention, 
and of the joyous festivity of the Dinner. This last occasion 
especially, it is impossible to reproduce on paper. The excellence 



TWENTY-FIFTH ANNIVERSARY. 59 

of the speeches, the enlivening effect of the music, the wit and the 
laughter, the enthusiasm for the Fraternity which had been so 
strongly manifested by young and old throughout the whole two 
days, but which now seemed to have reached their climax, were 
what gave to the occasion its peculiar charm — and these can be 
known only by those who enjoyed them. It was a fitting con- 
clusion for the Anniversary ceremonies, and the whole celebra- 
tion was one worthy of the Fraternity, and which will be long 
remembered by all who took part in it. 



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